Ok, so I thought it would be fun to start a ‘rubriekje’ in which we can share photos, movie clips or images that we have made ourselves. My first object: a snapshot I took during my recent trip to Brussels. I have thoughts about it (precarious ones!), but I first would like to know what you think!
What kind of community does the depicted image-text express? What kind of community does my framing of this picture suggest? What concept of spatiality can we use to grapple the ‘message’ that the image-text with its particular emplacement posits?
Note: we should perhaps channel my show and tell object through the fact that Brussels is the city where the EU parliament settles. And that, ironically, Brussels is the dubious winner of Europe’s most delapitated public parks and residential areas prize (I can show you a pictures of that as well…)
Diana Soto De Jesús
Rubato
Dea
Rik Fifis
One might be inclined to look at this poster in this delapitated area as one of Foucault’s heterotopia, a place where a cultures imagination comes into existence through a physical object. The dream of a better future, whatever utopia, gets a physical place in the cityscape through a poster. However, there are several ways in which this does not seem to work for me.
Ok, something went wrong, I pressed enter and so i have to leave second reply.
In a strange kind of way, the poster does not really work for me. The future is in the air: what future? This child with a kite? A romantic future? The future is with the children?
The emplacement, then, might be its savior, but this also does not seem complete. Because of the way the foto is taken, we see cars (which are quite nicely kept and not burned out carcasses of cars) and a quite good looking pavement.
Let’s zoom out again, Brussels as a city. I think there might be something in the fact that Europe’s parliament is in Brussels but I must say that I think at the moment Europe’s future is taking place in Strasburg.
All and all, what I think bothers me most about this foto is its deliberate emplacement. All artists place their artworks in a space that suits them but here it is all to plain for me. The contrast, to me, is rather boring and therefore misses its aim to shock. If we add to this the rather poor graphic design I think that closes the book for me.
Maybe there is something I am not seeing.